Episode 011 - Interview with Chelsea and TK of Sky Eater
In this interview episode:
Chel and TK of the band Sky Eater share their take on good songwriting, creativity in music production, recording at home and music production. Their small music production team runs like a well-oiled machine as they apply the "Relay Race" principle, which we discussed in episode 10.
Links:
Sky Eater's phenomenal video "Wind Blows"
Sky Eater on Triple J Unearthed
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Contact the podcast host Yarn at mixartist.com.au
Tags:
#music production, #home recording, #recording, #mixing, #music production, #SkyEater, #Reggae, #MixedByYarnTheMixArtist
Transcript (auto-generated by a robot - please forgive the occasional error):
Jan "Yarn' Muths
This is the production talk podcast episode 11. Welcome back to the production talk podcast. It's absolutely fabulous to have you on board today. Last week we looked at the typical music production timeline and realised just how many different jobs you self producing musicians have, songwriting, composing, writing lyrics arranging, recording, programming, editing, mixing, mastering, publishing, distribution, promoting and marketing. Over the next few episodes, we are going to dive into more detail on these topics. And today, I'd like to talk more about the first few jobs. So I thought about the most knowledgeable and most experienced songwriter I know, too many to choose from. I picked shell and Tom Watson on a sticky for this interview. Because I admire this flow state like effortless production workflow. I've worked with both of them in the studio many times, and there's never any dramas, no frustration, no uphill battles when they're around. Nowadays, chill and TK produce their own music from home the way many of us want to, but not always know how to both chill and TK has academic musical qualifications. But I think the main reason they work so well together is that they have mastered the music production relay race, which I explained in last week's episode. And if you're not entirely sure what I'm talking about here, please go back to episode number 10 and have a listen. Okay, now let's get to the good stuff. Here's my interview with Chell and TK of sky eater. With me today is Chell. And TK from the band sky eater. Thank you very much for making the time today. I've known you for a long time. And I've seen quite a bit of you know, musical development and experimentation to all kinds of awesome directions. And yeah, hope to talk to you today about your recent productions and hopefully get some some good knowledge out of you of how you best approach something complex like you do with just two people. So hey, thank you for being on board. Thank you for making the time. So Cheryl, please tell us what what are you currently working on.
Chelsea Sky Eater
And we are currently working on recording a new album. And we are very lucky because we have the problem of having so much material that we've been trying to figure out the best way to package it all and record it all and present it to the world. And this next album is going to be more of our down temporary kind of trip hop influenced music.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Yeah, fantastic. So you basically have a pool of songs to choose from and then you picked some for this album or Yeah, that's a beautiful position to be in. It is. Okay, so how big is your pool of songs? Roughly?
Chelsea Sky Eater
I'd say there's at least 20 at the moment.
We've got enough for a trip hop album, a reggae album, and then maybe part of the drum and bass album. So there's quite a few songs there. And there's they're being written all the time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
So I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about songwriting, if that's okay. Yeah. So are they all collaborative ideas? Or do you sometimes come up with an idea yourself, right? Do you write an entire song itself? Or do you pass it fun back? How does it work between the two of you?
TK BassDread
Or it depends, it depends what would constitute a song. If you're talking in the traditional sense of melody and lyrics, then Josie composes the songs, but being kind of hybrid electronic acoustic act that augments the live performance of technology. I think that part of the competition does come down to the production and the beat making and the sound design as well. So I'd like to think that it is a collaborative process throughout.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of collaboration that goes on. Okay,
Jan "Yarn' Muths
so, Chelsea, you might start with a melody and you know, some lyrics. And then you bounce ideas phone back between the two of you to read the ride.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Yeah, they seem to pretty well come out formed most of the time, with like, melodies and lyrics and structures. Mostly kind of there. Yeah, bits do change. Once we start recording. Once we do the pre production kind of stuff, move things around. And then Tom adds so much in terms of dynamics, and yeah, all the beautiful atmospheric extra sparkly stuff, is his department's good.
TK BassDread
I mean, sometimes I will just have, you know, had a rare piece of time on my hands and I just play around with some drum beats or extract some loops from some drum recordings that I've done or just find a groove and put it down and then I'll just stamp it out and chuck it into Ableton Live. And then we've got maybe the low low pressure gig that's long, like a three cent gig at the market. Sometimes we play at the farmers market, we use as a bit of a platform to experiment new material. So I'll chop the loop down, Chelsea will start playing some chords and leave that I'll come up with a baseline of her chords. And then she's very, as most horn players are very, very quick to find melodic hooks, and start stacking up harmonies and grabbing themes. And then will, it will develop over a course of gigs, to the point where it feels like a foreign song. And then we'll start doing pre production recordings off the back of that.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
So you're saying that you were writing songs as you play live gigs? Sometimes we do that sometimes. That's phenomenal. It's part of the process. Well, talking about, you know, killing two birds with one stone. That's a fantastic idea.
Chelsea Sky Eater
And people in the audience have no idea exactly what they're watching. Oh, that's
Jan "Yarn' Muths
excellent. That's really good. Okay. And, in your experience, how much time does it take you for, you know, develop a song from the idea to until, you know, the arrangement is set and becomes a bit more of a solid structure is that? does that differ a lot?
TK BassDread
I mean, it depends how one would quantify that it's defining the time in in a very busy schedule of gigging and, and teaching and, and promotion, and all the other things that you have to do as a musician to survive, is now if I had, if we had a week of no activities, and we had an idea, then we would probably have it pre production recording, recorded and arranged within a couple of days. Yeah, well, that's fast. Yeah, I mean, once once it gets down to the nitty gritty, what I'll generally do is I'll put whatever drum loops that we're using, whether it's something I've created or something that Chelsea's found that she likes, I'll put it into, into the DA W, and just get it to come in and play some, some guide keys, and then do a guide guide vocal, and then leave it with me. And then I'll just kind of shuffle things around to into a rough shape of how I like the song to go. And then think of what additional layers I can add or I usually will put start off with just a synth bass, and some MIDI MIDI keys or some nice arteria keys and organs in there. record some electric guitar and just start sketching stuff, mapping it out, layering up extra drum hits and bits of sound design and find a good shape for it. And then I'll play it Chelsea, see if she likes it. And if we were kind of roughly agree on how the songs go, and the tempo and the vibe, then we'll just make a plan to start laying down final recordings for the parts. And, you know, once once that we're at that stage of the process, it all happens very quickly.
That sounds amazing. It sounds to me like you're a well oiled machine in some ways.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Yeah, I think we've got a pretty good workflow going. Yeah,
TK BassDread
so it's like, even some of the guide vocals were keeping the charity spontaneously laid down, and they've got such beautiful articulation and expression within them. That it seems like almost forced to try and recreate. And, you know, it's well captured. We'll keep those. But I'm, I'm pretty much in charge of the rhythm. Chelsea's in charge of the melody. And we share the harmony a little bit depending on who's got the ideas for the chords.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
And you would write all the horn parts? I would assume? Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. That sounds really good. Like, you know, you were very like, like some factory You know, you're putting them out
Chelsea Sky Eater
tirelessly, Amazon factory,
Jan "Yarn' Muths
some being isn't gonna talk about being a song factory. What do you do? Do you ever suffer from from writer's block? Have you good moments where just nothing seems to work or the ideas just don't seem to come?
Chelsea Sky Eater
I don't really get that Lucky you. I usually try to work with if I'm, if I feel like writing a song. Then I'm like, whatever I'm doing, I'll just try and do it. And sometimes I'll be, for example, we went hot air ballooning. At the start of this year. We were on the bus to go to get into the hot air balloon at like five o'clock in the morning and had a song idea. Sorry, I just sang it into my phone like on a bus full of people on the way to the hot air balloon.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Oh, great. And that turned into song.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Yeah, the song. Is this going to be on the next album that is probably going to be on the reggae album. But we have been performing it live. Which means it's the purest you Oh yeah, that's
TK BassDread
that's beautiful kind of that's got real kind of sloggy salby you know, like a real kick in the snare is laying far behind the beep really rolls along beautifully.
Chelsea Sky Eater
And I know No, it's not that on personal level. It's the song that's about losing someone that you love is about losing a pet friend, actually. And it's about like, it's really about the beauty, the beautiful life that you share with other like people and creatures that come into your life and I I can't even think of how it goes right now.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
And that idea to come to came to you were as you were sitting on the bus there, you just pull out your phone and sing it down straightaway. Fantastic. And when you listen back to those recordings of ideas to connect back to that idea immediately or do or sometimes find that you can't make that connection you had at the beginning.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Does that happen? I find I can usually make the connection. Yeah. And then it'll I think, after that we also had one of those more jammy kind of gigs. And we just put down some chords and I tried singing that idea over the top, and it worked.
TK BassDread
I think there's, there's something to be said for being courageous. And not being too afraid or not taking yourself too seriously. It's kind of like, you've got to take yourself seriously enough to do something good. Baby takes up too seriously, you don't do anything. That's right. And I find that you know that over the years, I've written lyrics that they normally manifest in the form of some sort of like, rhymes or ragamuffin rap stuff. And I'll agonise over, trying to say something concise and poignant. And I'll really agonise over the type of language we use and how I'm presenting it try not to be too preachy, or. And it takes me a very, very long time to write lyrics. And because I wrapped is a lot of lyrics, it's like a whole song in 16 bars. Whereas Chelsea's is a really inspiration to me, because she'll just, she'll take a story or an experience and just explain it really, really beautifully. And people resonate with that and connect with very quickly because it isn't, you know, isn't so contrived.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
It's more of a spontaneous way of of writing lyrics, rather than you're planning it and thinking it all out? Yeah, it's very sincere. Is it possible we're talking about overthinking? Is that what it could be? That's me, that's why I've come across that point. Many times when it comes to music, and you know, a lot of people get stuck into a point now let it be writing songs or performing or sometimes a recording or production where, you know, overthinking can lead to actually poor outcomes in the end. So,
Chelsea Sky Eater
yeah, trying to force it when you when you're not in the mood. Like if I don't feel like doing something right then or, like, if I don't feel inspired to write something, then I just wait. And just let it go. And just wait until another time when I'm go for a walk in nature or just happened to be doing something random and the thoughts come to me, then I sit down and write. So when your mind is offered, in some ways, if you distract your mind with something else, then inspiration comes to you. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it does come at random times. Sometimes.
TK BassDread
I think. I mean, staring at a blank piece of paper isn't particularly inspirational. Yes, I've done many have spent many hours over the years, like I write, I'm gonna write a song now looking at a piece of paper, whereas if you're looking at, you know, some dolphins frolicking in, in in the ocean, or, or, you know, getting on a hot air balloon, or you know, taking a walk through nature and smelling the wonderful aromas of the eucalypts.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Or just sitting and looking at the sky, or the way the trees, the way the leaves are blowing in the wind. So you take inspiration from from nature a lot, and that's really good. So do you know when you when you suffer from overthinking, can you control this? Can you actually say, Okay, I'm gonna stop doing this now and distract myself to something else?
TK BassDread
I've definitely, I mean, I don't do a lot of, I don't know, write a lot of lyrics. At the moment I do. I do a lot of the production side of things. So I've tried to develop an area of discipline where I don't spend too much time. Yeah. And overthink what I'm doing. Just have a listen. What does this piece of music need to drive the groove? And what does it need to do need to flesh out the soundscape and, and the harmony? And is what you're doing what I'm doing my role? Is it adding anything to the music is it supporting the message and the vocals because you know, if you let go go way back to ancient Indian, you know, traditional music, the fact that the singing is the highest of all art form. So everything else that happens is either emulating or supporting it. And that's something that I always try and bring myself back to so you don't get too carried away. Of course, in contemporary music, the beat and the rhythm is very, very important. You know, people like to hear if you're, something's gonna move their body, but ultimately, people want to have an emotional experience. You've got to facilitate an emotional response by what you're doing. So it really really have to be put the emphasis on the lyrics on On the feeling and the meaning of and try and support that with the instrumentation. So I try to do that and don't get too carried away. In in audio trickery.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Yes, yes, I can see that. And, you know, the technology that we use today can lead you to clicking too much, I think, in staring at screens unplugging windows for too long. Yeah. Tim, what you said, I can really relate to this, I see that as well, when I mix that I sometimes get caught in a corner where I start to overthink. And I usually identify that by just realising, you know, look at my productivity. And if I don't get much done in a long time, that's usually because I'm overthinking. And then for me, it's time to have a break,
TK BassDread
I tend to like have a like a, you know, I have a pass arranging songs. And then I'll, I'll just bounce out some rough material, put on the Google Drive. Next time we got a long drive to a gig, we listen to all of the tracks, like it's an album, or you know, just to make like a hot mix, like do a really rough master chain on on the master buss and and then we'll just listen to them and like objectively in the car, and have a think about what it needs, what we like what we don't like, where the arrangements can be cut down or extended. And then I'll have another pass where I record a lot of instrumentation, I'll send like a tire pop, and I'll have that set up for a few days. I do all the guitars, and then I'll go through and edit them and try and make them fit within the context. And then I'll record some bass and do the same and then we'll do another rough bounce. And next time we get a long drive. We'll listen to objectively so I'd I try not to do too much repetitive listening until we're at the final mix stage. So we can stay objective about the distinction between songwriting and arrangement. And mixing and mastering? Yes, there's that perfect sense, there is a quite a big grey area between the two when you're producing electronic music or you know, it's like a hybrid what we do so some of the composition is production, and is going to find a distinction between what you're doing with the production and the composition and what you're doing to mix it and polish it up at the end. Okay,
Jan "Yarn' Muths
so do you sometimes find yourselves starting to use mixing tools too early?
TK BassDread
Yes. I'm trying to Yeah, it's constant battle, trying to find the discipline to find the line. And
Jan "Yarn' Muths
that can distract you from what actually needs to be done right now. Yeah. And
TK BassDread
that's the point that I turn it off. just bounce it walk away. Yes. Don't listen to it for two days, then we take a drive and Kappa casual Listen, yes, I wouldn't listen to the vocals and listen to the song and think about the shape of it, and zoom out,
Jan "Yarn' Muths
zoom out, I like that, then I use the trick as well. Sometimes I see really clearly when I'm in the middle of a mix and you know, start to get a bit fatigued, often see really clearly what needs to be done. If I have a break, walk out, get myself a cup of tea from the kitchen and listen from a distance sometimes even through the closed door. That often gives me the insight to really understand what's actually going on. So a change of perspective of finders is good in many situations,
TK BassDread
that is there is good value in that I've got a second set of monitors, slightly cheaper that don't mind cranking up a little bit. And so I often will go out of the room and you know, do some weeding in the garden or wash the dishes and I'll just crank up the old ktrk monitors and let the track blast in the in the other room and just see how I feel about it from somewhere else.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Yeah, and I think I also perceive things differently when my mind is taken off it so when I'm occupy myself but making yourself a cup of tea, you know, my mind is actually on something else and it's select my subconscious digests the song rather than the act of mind if that makes any sense. Yeah. And that really helps me to gain some clarity in Chelsea, I've got one more question for you. How do you know whether a song when you write a song whether it's a good song or not, you know, you probably have some songs that come together easier. When do you know that you've written a good song? What what measures what benchmarks are there to to write a good song?
Chelsea Sky Eater
answers to that question. I for me, I think the best songs are written kind of in a shorter space of time all in one go with not too much. Like overthinking again, we're going to talk about that word. That's okay. Yeah. And I haven't thought of a really great and a different analogy for this yet but to me like the good ones come out kind of black doing a good pay.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Oh, that is so funny. You know, I used to play in a band ages ago. And the singer Stephanie was a played bass. Yeah, Curtis couldn't shut up about the one fact that the one of our best songs we ever played. He actually that idea came to him on at the end when he just yeah, stop telling everybody that story. Well, yeah, I don't mean writing them all while you're doing that, but
Chelsea Sky Eater
the feeling of satisfaction and completeness.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Okay. And when it comes to lyrics, you know, do you? Do you? Have you got certain subjects or themes that you'd like to, to address in your lyrics?
Chelsea Sky Eater
Yeah, there definitely seems to be a big focus for me on connecting with nature, and patterns of connecting with other people, other humans, and empathy comes up a lot, empathy for others, and empathy for ourselves with whatever we're going through. So, yeah, I think a lot of the time I'll write a song, when I'm feeling a little bit challenged about a certain thing. And then it's kind of like a song to teach me how to deal with that situation.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
So it becomes almost like an outlet, to, you know, deal with the situations for Yeah,
Chelsea Sky Eater
and there's a there's a lot of writing that I do that doesn't turn into songs that serve that same purpose.
Jan Muths
Okay. in your own words, you know, when you write many songs, what makes it that the describes a good song in your eyes? How do you put some songs in the good basket and others don't end up there?
Chelsea Sky Eater
I think the good ones just end up sticking somehow. I don't know anything about you. When he said that doesn't really work. Are the good ones?
TK BassDread
I don't know. Like, did you know that there's ones that are currently in Charles's mind that she's maybe written more recently, that are quite catchy. Maybe Jan, the chorus had a gig and people really enjoyed it. And like simple messages, the simpler is usually the better. There's one that's the chorus line is I have everything I need to be happy right here, repeated record a sign and it's and it's a really beautiful chord progression. Lovely major sevenths non diatonic major centre to reduce the and beautiful and comforting to set to listen to. So I think the message and the harmony that Chelsea's written, they're all like, together really, quite satisfying feeling. But you know, sometimes I'll be racking up the beats and Chekhov's few chords, and she'll be like, Oh, I need some lyrics. And she'll just rifle through these books and find recordings, and then just find something she hasn't used yet. And just give it a go, Oh, cool. And try one or two, and then one of them feels good that the, the, the, you know, the, the syllables, and the delivery does seem to work over the rhythm or the chord progression, then then it will just stick. And you might need to write an extra burst to make it work. And, you know, usually within about 15 seconds, she's got a great horn, horn line and a hook. Yeah, I don't know, there's this available if anyone wants help branding.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Look in what advice would you give other musicians who might be struggling with songwriting or, you know, get stuck in some writing and not getting results?
Chelsea Sky Eater
I would say, don't be afraid to just be honest, and write about things that are meaningful to you, and your experience that you're going through in life at the moment. Because I think a lot of the time well, especially in the past in society, we're very encouraged not to talk about our vulnerabilities so much. But I'm a huge advocate for everyone talking about their experience and sharing it because a lot of the time people who have gone through the same thing you've gone through, and the only way to find that out is to be open and start the conversation. So yeah, I'd say be courageous. And there's
Jan "Yarn' Muths
some great advice. I really like that. That takes a bit of courage to put yourself out there. Yeah. And you know, share part of your soul and your feelings. But
Chelsea Sky Eater
it's very scary sometimes during the scarier Yeah.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Have you ever had negative experience sharing? what some of your most personal feelings? Not that I know of very good.
TK BassDread
I think that if I was going, if I was going to play a game of Jeopardy with Chelsea's lyrics, I would say, what happened? And how did it make you feel?
Jan "Yarn' Muths
as a band, you're, you're a little bit special in the sense that you literally cover every single stage of the production cycle from songwriting to playing the musical performances, to recording its programming to editing, mixing. I don't think you've mastered yet but that's probably just a question of time. So looking at what needs to be done, you know, the many hats we need to wear today. As a band, you literally between the two of you, you cover all of them. We have a lot of hats.
TK BassDread
We have a lot of hats, and we don't have a lot of spare time.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
I can imagine find wearing so many hats does it take away from just being a musician in any way? Like,
TK BassDread
I suppose it can. I think over time of experience you become you become more thick skinned to the things that you do and are able to start to draw boundaries between them. You know, if I go out and I take my bass guitar and playing a gig of Jesse Morris, I'm just I just get lost inside my bass guitar and I play beautiful bass lines. And I don't think about anything else. If, if I'm, if I'm recording Chelsea's guide tracks for an upcoming album, I'm just doing an engineer and just passively finding the best way to capture and help facilitate good performances. And then when we start to build the tracks, you know, every step of the way, I kind of have to put a different hat on and make sure that I'm not wearing them all at once. Because you can kind of bamboozle and overwhelm yourself, if you're thinking too far ahead about what you're doing. So the I think we've time and experience, you'd have divisions and boundaries, I need to kind of learn to turn them on and off like a tap, and they will blur points. Yeah, but experience teaches you that, if you are able to draw those boundaries, you're gonna make your life a lot easier, a lot less stressful, a lot less confusing, and you'll probably get a much better result. And there are things like mastering, I like to get someone else to do that, just to have a set of objective ears, because I have worn so many hats on the way through, and I have to make sure that I'm not in my own little delusional world. And that what we've created is in some way relevant, and you know, and you know, the mixing is balanced, you know, and it will work for, you know, some some level of commercial context. And it will convey the emotion that was intended. So I have to get the tracks past Chelsea first. Because she will often be the one that's delivering the emotional content and the story. And so if the tracks support that, and she gives me the thumbs up, then I send it to my mastering guy.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
That's very good, too, in some ways till you are the emotional quality control for Trump's mixes. Yeah, I understand that. Right. Yeah, she's like the gatekeeper the emotion. That is fantastic that? Well, you know, if you look at how people decide to listen to song or to skip it, that's very rarely a conscious decision, you know, that. Usually, it's a gut feeling. It's an emotional response, either like the song or you don't you don't even know how you make that decision. It just happens. Yeah, so why not make good mix decisions from that same emotional place? I think that's a really wise idea. And that's a great workflow
TK BassDread
that have got good stuff. And there's there also are pretty good parameters to think about, you know, if you're writing a song that you want people to listen to on streaming or you know, to be commercially viable. Your beats got to come in pretty early. Your vocals if they don't come in on the first 30 seconds, they've lost them. Yes, you got to be pretty quick in with some sort of hook in some sort of rhythm. And you got to hit the chorus by a minute. That's kind of a rough area that I think about when I'm looking at them pragmatically.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Yes, it's, that's, that's right. And people say that listeners have a shorter attention span these days, and therefore, you can't afford a long intro anymore, which in some ways is actually sad, but it's literally just the reality of what it is.
TK BassDread
We save those for the gigs. Yes. Okay, that's cool. You can be a bit more self indulgent and extend the arrangements in the gigs and give someone a different experience to the album more improvisation. Or breakdowns don't sections, they really go go nuts for the live performance, with the recorded versions, you know, will often create something then go Okay, well, we need to make a radio edit. We love having that many horn lines and that extra chorus in there. We love having that breakdown. But the songs five minutes 40. And that's nearly a Bohemian Rhapsody down to five minutes. You know, some of them end up being about 420.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
That's great. And, Tom, now that you've learned to wear all these hats, what would be your advice for, let's say less experienced home producers? You know, should they try to wear all these hats one after another? Or are there any areas where you would recommend to maybe just get help? Well, I heard you
TK BassDread
say having a good community of musicians and or producers and music lovers around you is a very valuable thing. When you're in the engine room, or you know cooking away at these these tracks and exploring your the boundaries of your technical expertise and your creativity. You can sometimes get lost inside a little bubble and like weave Instrumental Performance, what feels good, doesn't always sound good in that moment. So, you know, if, if I'm in a state of primal ecstasy with the jambay drum in a drum circle, and I'm beating the hell out of the thing, it feels great as a wonderful release. But if I recorded that and put it on Spotify, I don't think many people would want to listen to it. There's a difference between being cathartic musical experience and kind of some sort of self indulgent experimentation and something that where you're looking for to create some I mean, that will, in some way, like I said, facilitate an emotional response or some sort of catharsis for someone else, or be soothing, or beautiful, to immerse yourself in. So I think having a good good idea of whether you're in the studio and you're just you're going down the wormhole to explore the doors of perception with your equipment, and then shifting into a mindset where, okay, I've explored that now. How can you use that in a context that will be useful to support a song? or How will I reach out to people and make them feel something with these tools that I've equip myself with? So, yes, it's definitely looking through different eyes.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Yeah, I really like that. That's a good way to sum it up. There was a lot to take in there right now. There was a lot of wisdom in what you just said. Tell us more about the future for sky. You're working on this album, have you? How far are you with that? At this stage?
Chelsea Sky Eater
We've got a few more final vocal takes to put down and then the harmonies and I think that's pretty much it.
TK BassDread
Yeah, there may be one or two solos and I'm looking to find opportunity to record some vibraphone a few Jones with then he lives quite far away now is a very good friend, a very talented musician, but we've included some good guest musicians on this album. We're not playing absolutely everything like the last few. So we've got Peter hunt from curry, Stuart curry from a structure firewalk we've got Elena mochi got from Jessie Morris band who also actually plays Felicity lawless now and i a trumpet from pineapple laser and a 420 sound. So we're looking to have like a smattering of wonderful guest performance most of which we've recorded I think we've got maybe any some very haunting VR really amazing Viola is like this kind of haunting slow motion Bollywood line in one track and she's playing it's very mournful sounding Viola and attract Chelsea wrote about cutting the end of her finger off of x. So,
Chelsea Sky Eater
if any, and I actually had a writing session together till you need to explain that. Oh, yeah, we can laugh. Yeah, it was pretty horrific for a sax player to be chopping wood with a short handed axe, which everybody at home, I can recommend that you get along handled axe if you're chopping wood and be really, really extra careful. But I did slip through the end of my fingertip with the axe. And I couldn't play for three months, but I did write some really good songs. Well, I think they're good. How is your fingertip nowadays, it is amazing. It regrew. So I learned that if you cut the end of your finger off, anywhere from the fingernail upwards, it can regrow like a lucid tale. tentacle. Yeah, what
Jan "Yarn' Muths
a story. It's actually not the first story about injuries or this podcast series. But regular listeners would know about this by now we can make this a thing I guess. I think
TK BassDread
out of all the tracks we sometimes will we have a listener with some friends just casually as well as the progress on the tracks out of all the tracks that one when I'm when we need to listen to music with other people. You get a sense of empathy. Like when you when you sit when other person you it's almost like you hear it through their ears. And so we've sat with other friends and listened to the tracks and they all have a different feeling. But this one just made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It's the slowest, darkest chain out of the lot, but it is full of emotion. And
Chelsea Sky Eater
it turned into quite an uplifting song as well. Like, for me listening to it. It's like it starts out all dark and really, really emotional. But when it hits the chorus, it's just like just being lifted up on a cloud when you're when you feel those butterflies in your stomach and
TK BassDread
the hairs in the back of your neck standing up. You know, you got a good song. Yes. I said as an aside by the company you're sitting with you if they feel that you feel that and that I think that's important. Friends, musicians, producers, music lovers, if you play in their company, and you feel a swell of emotion in the room, you're onto it. Excellent. Yeah.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
So you in some ways you do like you know, product testing with small groups, you play to friends who trust and you get some feedback about your music from friends, which I suppose is kind of informal really.
TK BassDread
Yeah, like we've had some friends over dinner I'm in a jam and we've been listening to other music all night in the background and I'll just a few tracks on
Jan "Yarn' Muths
in in business terms that product testing that you know, obviously when you do it in a casual way this can be just as effective because other people who listen to the song for the first time or Don't have a certain clarity, I believe that you may not have when you're in the middle of it, you're so mentally tangled up in a large production. So that's a really effective way. I have to admit that I sometimes do the same thing. When with my art when I when I mix, that I play a mix to other people, like my kids, for example. And it's not really about what they say afterwards. And I just like to watch people as they listen to my work, and it tells me a lot. Yeah, you know, when I see people at the edge of their seat, bobbing their heads, I know, I don't even know need to know what they think about it. I already know it's good. But if people start to get distracted, my boy runs away and doesn't want to listen to the end of it. I haven't done a good job yet. sheets are very good at sensing, whether it's a good song or not. I found kids are really good at that. A Daddy, there's too much for kilohertz vocals. That's a great example. Because literally, you know, it's the complete absence of overthinking kids have never learned to overthink. All they have is the amount of their emotional response to music. And it's literally the only one that counts, at least in my book at the end of the day. So it's really good to do that. Yeah,
TK BassDread
I think we kind of we digressed a little bit of a tangent there. About fingers are written in your head originally asked us about what the plans are? Yes, let's do. And so we've got 10 tracks, one of which has already released a single video clip, the wind blows underwater video clip. And we're going to have a nine tracks of unreleased material that we're working on, I'd say that we are, we've got about five or six lead vocals and a couple of bits and pieces to record then it's mix time. This probably will be over the next few months because we have quite big schedules. And our aim is to release it on vinyl later in the year. And once the country further settles down from from the problems we've been having with the pandemic, we are our plan is to reinstate a tour that we had planned for Adelaide in Western Australia. That was Yeah, it was we had it planned for I think, April 2020. And of course, the world shut down for a while. So we mean we'd already bought flight or done press releases. We've done all the right things. I had guest lectures booked to Adelaide sa and various gigs in good venues in Western Australia and would have been our first appearance. So I think it would be good to release that and use a tour across the country as a vehicle to promote it
Jan "Yarn' Muths
when knock on wood. Hopefully it will go ahead, hopefully sooner than later. Let's see how we go. Yeah, well, if you're okay with this, I would like to maybe put the link into the podcast notes to the release song. What's the title of that song again? wind blows wind blows. Thank you for reminding me the video is phenomenal. I enjoyed that a lot. So can't wait for that to be on. But we'll definitely put a link into the show notes as well, so that people can visit you and have you got a website. Where would people find out more about your skydive.
Chelsea Sky Eater
Now we have a website WWW dot sky ada.com.au. And you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, all the streaming platforms, you can listen to the material that we've already released.
Jan "Yarn' Muths
Fantastic. Yeah. And hopefully people will be able to see your live soon. Yeah, all the good dates are on our website as well. Okay, so gigs are happening again. And they're happening the big Australia tour later this year. Fingers crossed, knock on wood. Yeah. Let's see how we go with that. But I wish you all the best for that. So well thank you so much for making the time today and sharing your wisdom. That's really insightful for me. And I really appreciate you dedicating your time to this. So thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Wow, this was absolutely Finn nomina. Shell and TK on amazing music production team. And I admire how they both navigate each other's strengths and weaknesses and relay their production tasks. But they also don't hesitate to outsource tasks to external specialists, whether that's Bollywood style strings or mastering. And they truly are a small music production team working like a well oiled machine. Next week, I'd like to focus on mixing and mastering. Most of you already know the technical aspects. So I'll be brief on the scientific side. I believe it will be much more valuable to talk about the artistic side, and I'll explain how it fits like to be in the mixing zone. And just before we finish up, let me please ask you for a favour. In your podcast app right next to this episode, you'll find a share button. As a self producing musician, you're probably a member of musician groups or forums. Can you please click that button and share this episode to these groups and forums for me, maybe write a sentence or two. That would absolutely make my day. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week when we speak about mixing bye for now.
